Tacky Jacquie

What are trackbacks for? They’re for letting bloggers and readers know that you’ve linked to them, providing an easy way for people to find the commentary and reactions to a post that piques their interest.

They’re not for shameless self-promotion aimed at becoming the next hot libertarian blog chick with a picture on her sidebar. Case in point: Jacqueline Passey, who has sent trackbacks to just about everyone who linked to Catallarchy’s Libertarian Girl revelation. Readers following those trackbacks will find no mentions of the blog they were just looking at, but they will find Jacqueline linking to eight pictures of herself and a story about how short her skirts are.

That’s nine blogs I’m aware of and there could possibly be more. As for the trackback she posted here, I think Homestar Runner says it best: BALETED!

[Instant update: I'm an accidental ass. I tried to be conscientious and turned off the feature that automatically pings the blogs listed above. It turns out I missed a step and, as Steve of Hammer of Truth points out, sent my own round of unrelated trackbacks. My apologies to them and please feel free to delete the pings.]

So then you come along and leave your now-unrelated trackback too… classic.

Maybe we can make this a recursive meme, and eventually we can all trackback each other complaining about the trackbacks that are going on, at which point we will all laugh merrily at what a horribly stupid circle jerk it all was.

So now my Valentine’s Day festivities include hosting a circle jerk. And not even a real circle jerk, which would be pathetic enough, but a virtual, trackback circle jerk. This post is going downhill very fast.

And Jacqueline, considering the tangential relation of both our posts and the remarkable speed and thoroughness of your pings, I still side with shameless self-promotion. But hey, you’ll get more traffic from this entry I devoted to you than you would have from a lowly trackback, so you win either way.

I agree that there are varied mores on the use of trackbacks, though surveying a Google search for “trackback etiquette” did seem to turn up a majority view against vacant trackbacks.

I’m unsure what you mean by how she entwines conversations between blogs. Following one of her trackbacks leads a reader only to her entry, not to the many others she pinged (I found those by looking at who linked to Catallarchy). Had she provided links to those sites I’d have had no problem with the practice and she’d have done a much better job connecting blog posts into a conversation.

If someone wants to call attention to a related post of his own, it’s easy enough to directly say so in the comment section or to email the blogger and let him know about it. In my opinion, using trackbacks for this when good alternatives exist just muddles the system for everyone.

Lastly, I’m glad you don’t think my auto-trackbacking was an abuse, even though it was entirely accidental.

Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, bartender, cocktail consultant, and magician in Portland, Oregon. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in the print or online editions of The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Times, Reason, The Oregonian, and other publications. His book on beer cocktails, Cocktails on Tap, is forthcoming from Stewart, Tabori, and Chang in 2015. [Photo by David L. Reamer.]